Must-read of the week: Carl Zimmer’s perfect profile of Neil Tyson. That last paragraph is just textbook. It appeared in Playboy and spurred some debate about where writers publish – some great comments here

What do Stephen Hawking’s peers think of him? A touching tribute from Alok Jha. “If I get a headache, I can’t work. But he seems to be able to produce stuff despite fantastic problems.”

How to circumvent peer review: publish in no-name journal. HIV-denier secures publication. In honour of Duesberg, I’m starting a new peer-reviewed journal called Proceedings of Drunk Tramp with Traffic Cone.

“I’m obsessed with Survivor and thought it would be fun. WRONG!!!” One-star review of Lord of the Flies, and others of the worst reviews on the internet. I especially liked “Just. Burn. It” for Animal Farm.

The Huffington Post starts a new science section, and the world dies of irony poisoning. Carl Zimmer considers whether they’ve turned over a new leaf. I look forward to future pieces such as: “50 sciencey reasons why what we said before was crap [SLIDESHOW]”